Nintendo E3 Round-Up: Wii Fit Plus, Wii Motion Plus, and Mario

Nintendo's E3 conference just ended, and it gave us some cool glimpses into the company's future. It wasn't nearly as much of a 'blockbuster' conference as Microsoft's, and the Wii Vitality Meter certainly isn't going to compete with Project Natal for hype, but they had a lot of cool announcements nonetheless. Here's what we can look forward to in Nintendo's future.WiiFit Plus: This was one of the big announcements from Nintendo today. The first Wii Fit system has sold more than 15 million copies, and Nintendo is clearly giving the sequel a lot of priority. The Plus will ship with 6 new strength and 6 new yoga activities which you can combine together in any way you like to create your own unique exercise routines.

Nintendo also promises that you'll be able to target specific areas of the body for toning and conditioning with the Plus, and that it will be able to keep track of calories burned for you. The Plus will also be chock full of games, 15 of them. These new games will run the gamut from juggling and skateboarding to a new title called "Perfect Ten". In Perfect Ten players will have to bounce their hips in order to hit number combinations adding up to 10.

Hinted at during the conference was a Wii Fit Plus game that gives you a new way to look at gaming icon Mario. We'll be able to control Mario via the balance board as we "walk a mile" in his shoes.

Wii Motion Plus: It looks like a just thin plastic sleeve you slip over the Wiimote, but it promises to do some pretty cool things. The Motion Plus gives "precision control" to gamers, and while we're not quite sure how much more 'precision' the Wii needs to get, the new games they're designing with the Motion Plus look pretty cool.

Nintendo showed off the cool skydiving intro to one of their new Wii mini-game collections. You controlled your skydiver by acting as if the remote was him. When you twist and turn and roll the Wiimote, your character responds in kind. There look to be options for cooperative coordination skydiving as well.

Once you land, you've got a bunch of sports based mini-games to choose from. We saw archery and basketball demonstrated today, and both games looked pretty intuitive. You jump and shoot just like you would on a real court, and the archery game looks to be about as close to real archery as it gets without a bow and arrow.

Tiger Woods 2010 and Sega's Virtual Tennis were both announced to be bundled with the Wii Motion Plus as well.

Super Mario Galaxy 2: For the first time ever Nintendo announced a second 3D Mario game for a console. We saw an awesome gameplay video from the new game, and from what I can see it looks fantastic. The Mario universe looks even larger and more fantastic than ever, and I am genuinely excited to see this title hit the Wii.

All in all, it was a pretty good press conference for Nintendo. They didn't blow Microsoft out of the water, but they introduced some cool new peripherals and a list of new titles that are certain to get the gaming community very excited. Not as excited as they'll be over Project Natal, but excited nonetheless.

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